Ingenious persons have shown that a five-pound note rightly guided will
liquidate an almost unlimited amount of liability. Let it be granted,
says the mathematician, that A owes B; B owes C; C owes D, and D owes
A,--one hundred shillings in each case. A gives a five-pound note to
B, who gives it to C, who gives it to D, who gives it to A. The
peregrinations of the same note wipes out twenty pounds of debt, and A
has the original bit of paper he started with.
In like manner a clever person can bestow a great favour upon another
and at the same time accommodate several others, leaving all under
obligations to him; while a blunderer, instead of making everybody
happy, would have accomplished nothing beyond creating enemies for
himself.
The shrewd Haldiman, bringing some promised work to the editor of “Our
National Art,” casually mentioned that Barnard Hope had been invited to
send some of his paintings to Paris.
“What! Do you mean the Chelsea giant? Why, that ass doesn’t understand
the rudiments of drawing, and as for colour--great heavens! there isn’t
a pavement chalk artist who is not his superior.”
Haldiman looked puzzled; then he said with some hesitation:
“I confess I used to think that; but of course we studied together
in Paris, and we students always underestimate each other. There is
something in Barney’s paintings that I don’t pretend to understand.”
“Understand! Bosh! There’s nothing in them but the vilest and most
ignorant smearing ever put upon canvas.”
“Then how do you account for the fact that some of the most advanced
critics are beginning to consider Barney seriously, as a new factor in
the art world?”
“I hadn’t heard of it. Who, for instance?”
“Well, I’m told that Viellieme simply raves over his work--says it’s
a distinctive new note, and that Barney is the only original genius
England has ever produced.”
“You amaze me! It can’t be true! Whatever any one may say of Viellieme’s
morale nature, no one can deny that he knows a picture when he sees it.”
“Of course; I’m simply giving what I have heard. As I say, I don’t
admire Barney’s work myself. However, I’m just off for Paris, and I’ll
find out for you, on the quiet, just what Viellieme thinks. If Barney is
a coming man you’d want to know it, and at least give the first inkling
of the new craze, if there is to be one, wouldn’t you?”
“Certainly. But I can’t believe it!”
“I’m not sure that I ought to mention it, but I know that a number of
Barney’s paintings are going over to France, and I believe especially
for Viellieme’s inspection.”
“I say, Haldiman, just find out for me all you can, will you? It seems
incredible! Still, art is full of surprises, and I should like to know.
If it is true, try to induce Viellieme to write an article on the new
era in art for me.”
“Would you print an article on Barney, if I get Viellieme to write it? I
thought you didn’t care for Barney’s work.”
“I don’t, but I’ll gladly print anything Viellieme will sign. Of
course, among the different schools I endeavour to maintain absolute
impartiality. I believe in letting every side be heard.”
“Well, I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks, Haldiman. I’ll be very much obliged to you, and any expense
you----”
“Oh, don’t mention it. I’m going to Paris anyhow, so there won’t be any
extra expense.”
*****
The article, marvellously illustrated, appeared in due course. The
result quite justified Barney’s expectations and expenditure, and the
Barnard Hope boom raged up and down the land. He was interviewed, and
photographed, and paragraphed. For a time it was hardly possible to pick
up a sixpenny illustrated weekly without seeing the latest photograph of
Barney in it, for the young man developed a genius for posing before a
camera that would have done credit to our greatest actor. The picture
representing him standing with arms folded across his breast, a stern
commanding expression upon his countenance, was the one perhaps most
sought after by young ladies, although the one in which he looked like
Rembrandt was also very popular. Exhibitors begged for his paintings,
nabobs bought them, and nobody understood them, which fact made the
boom a permanency. Real painters looked at each other in amazement, and
asked, “What is this world coming to?”--a question often propounded and
never adequately answered.
His great fame did not change Barney a particle; he was the same
hail-fellow he had always been, and an invitation to his “At Home”
became a distinction. America was especially lavish in its purchases of
his work, and he was offered fabulous sums to go there and lecture. The
adulation he received would have turned the head of almost any man;
but it had little effect on him, because he never had the slightest
misgiving that his great reputation was entirely undeserved, and he had
looked upon himself as the foremost man of the age long before the
world had recognized the fact. He received letters from all parts of
the country, whose writers, in most gushing phrase, said they had been
privileged to look upon his work at such and such an exhibition, and
they hoped to live better and nobler lives in consequence. Some of
these epistles affected Barney almost to tears, and he read them to his
friends, humbly thankful that the gift of bestowing such pleasure, and
wielding such an influence for good upon his fellow-creatures, had been
granted him.
Imitators arose, of course, but they did little to tarnish his
reputation; for, as Haldiman had said, there was only one Barney, and
it is never given to two men in any one generation to paint as badly as
Barney did. Art-critics scored the imitators mercilessly, and were in
the habit of saying that if Barnard Hope had not lived such and such a
picture would not have been painted,--which statement was probably quite
true.
Barney’s people were naturally very proud of him. His father had always
admired him with the intense admiration which a very little man has for
a very big relative; his mother referred to him as, “My son, Barnard
Hope, the celebrated painter.”
To all appearances Barney was a man greatly to be envied, but, alas!
how little does the public know the inner life of even its greatest
favourite! All may be fair to outward view, while within sits brooding
care. Barney had a secret trouble which he confided to no one, and it
caused him serious mental dissatisfaction. He had told Edna Sartwell
that she had blighted his life, and he fully believed this at the time
he made the gloomy statement. He sombrely pictured himself in the future
as a disappointed man--successful, perhaps, but cynically bitter with
existence, living the life of a recluse, and cherishing his broken
heart. As the victim of a hopeless passion, he pitied himself, and yet
took a melancholy pleasure in ruminating over the wreck of what might
have been a joyful career. To his dismay he found it impossible to
live up to his ideal. The forced laugh; the pessimistic smile; the dark
mantle of a great reserve which he hoped to fold around himself, did not
come natural to him, and he was continually backsliding into being his
own hilarious boisterous self, and having a good time, when he should
have been moping alone over an aching void. Above all things he expected
himself to forswear ladies’ society, and never again indulge in
the light, flippant, and complimentary talk in which he had been an
acknowledged master; but it grieved him to discover that he still took
a keen delight in their presence, while they, poor dears! unblushingly
adored Barney as they had always done. His arrival in any room
immediately brightened the occasion, and he was by all odds the most
popular young man in his set. His failure in the tragic _rôle_ he had
marked out for himself at first worried Barney, and led him to suspect
that he was not so deep as he had imagined; but this disquieting thought
gave way under his ultimate realization that the taciturn recluse of
fiction and the drama was merely a melancholy humbug who did not exist
in real life. This comforting discovery did much to place Barney once
more on good terms with himself, and by-and-by he abandoned the attempt
to pose as a stricken victim of woman’s inappreciation, and was once
more the genial host and the welcome guest.
As time went on, and his fame continued to spread, he fell more and
more under the gentle influence of Lady Mary Fanshaw, who was a modest,
refined, and altogether charming girl. She had an unbounded admiration
for Barney’s strength and manliness; and his many deeds of kindness
and lavish generosity, which he himself was at no particular pains to
conceal, won her deep regard. She did not pretend to understand his
paintings, but was quite willing to believe what appeared to be the
universal estimate, that they were works of the very highest genius.
In the company of Lady Mary, Barney’s heroic determination to lead a
monastic life became fainter and fainter. When Barney saw whither he was
drifting, he held a serious consultation with himself. Six months had
elapsed since the episode at Eastbourne, and this half year had been the
most fateful in his whole existence. Even though there was a lingering
disappointment over the now self-admitted fact that his life had not
been wrecked, yet he felt he owed it to his dignity not to propose
to Lady Mary until a year at least had intervened between the two
matrimonial excursions. To propose sooner would be to admit that he
did not know his own mind--and he particularly prided himself on his
strength of mind. An action that is indecent haste in six months may
be the epitome of calm deliberation in twelve. Instances are on
record where a man’s most cherished political convictions have changed
completely within a year, and a grateful country has testified its
appreciation of the honesty of the transformation by bestowing a peerage
or a knighthood upon the man. Why, then, should not a great painter
be deeply in love with two charming girls, if a reasonable interval
separated the declarations of affection? Barney said to himself that it
was undoubtedly wrong to be in love with two or more at the same time,
and he had to admit that in former days he had come dangerously near
that complicated condition; but he was young at the time, and youth is
an excuse which covers a multitude of errors. “This day six months,”
said Barney, definitely, “I shall ask Lady Mary to be my wife.”
Having thus reached finality in his meditations, he felt that sense of
satisfaction which a man always experiences when a perplexing problem is
authoritatively settled one way or another. Nothing is so demoralizing
as indecision. Hitherto he had been almost afraid to meet Lady Mary,
much as he delighted in her companionship; but now there was no reason
why he should hold aloof from her. Therefore, having written down the
date on which the momentous proposal was to take place, he arose with a
joyful exuberance of spirits, and resolved to celebrate his decision by
driving down to the pretty Surrey village near which Lady Mary’s father
lived. The tandem was a thing of the past.
He found that the sight of it brought up painful recollections of
Eastbourne; so he sold it, and acquired a most stylish four-wheeled
vehicle which he called his “growler,” drawn by two spirited black
horses. He spoke to his friends apologetically about his growler, and
said it gave no particular scope for a man’s driving powers, but would
serve until the coach which he had ordered from the most noted builders
in London was finished. A four-in-hand, he held, was the only thing
a man could drive with credit to himself and satisfaction to all
beholders. So with the black span dancing before him, held by a firm
hand, he rattled across Chelsea bridge and made for the interior of
Surrey.